Someone scammed one of my clients (maybe?)

[DilemmaGuy]

Greetings,

I just registered since I find myself in a dilemma and I don’t know how to proceed on the issue. Thing is, I made a commission for a client not too long ago. It was a ref sheet. Everything went smoothly and that’s pretty much all I can say about it. Thing is, this client recently uploaded to their page a new picture made by another artist and well… it looked kind of familiar to me. So I saved the picture and checked that the head of the character matched almost exactly the head I made for the refsheet. The character has a few recognizable features, and those matched exactly the same, as well as the overall proportions and placements. Thing is, I’m unsure on if I should bring this up to my client. I don’t know if it was done willingly that way on both parts (in which case, I wouldn’t really mind) or if it was a scam (and a pretty expensive one, since said artist uses GBP as currency and the client doesn’t). So, should I ask them?

Thank you beforehand for any take on the issue. Have a nice day!

[baja]

This is a difficult situation to really give advice on without getting full context, which would require a beware being submitted to us.

Is the commission in question of another character or of the same character you did a ref sheet for?
That's unclear in your write-up.

Overall? If you see a lot of similarities to your work and this new commissioned piece, it would be for the best to discuss things with both parties to really get an answer about your situation. Reach out to the client first, and then the artist who did the work.

It may not be a scam, it is entirely possible that the client wanted something to strongly reference the original piece, etc etc. The little things we can't know and won't know until you reach out and discuss things with the two parties involved here.